World War II veteran recalls life as a POW
By Bernie Delinski
Times Daily Staff Writer
FLORENCE With the brutal and hectic scenes of battle surrounding him, 2nd Lt. Darrell Russel had to make a decision.
His men were trapped behind a large rock. German soldiers were in front of them, behind them and alongside them.
Russel, who today lives in Florence, knew he had no choice. His men would be killed if they stayed to fight a moment longer.
So, he pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and tied it to a rifle.
The German solders approached and motioned for the men to go to the top of a road.
That was the first day of six months as a World War II prisoner of war for Russel, who discussed the experience Sunday during a meeting of the Natchez Trace Genealogical Society.
Russel, who is president of the society, vividly recalls those first moments of captivity on the front lines of the Vosges Mountains of France.
He and about a dozen soldiers went to the top of the road, as ordered, and were met with what Russel thought was going to be his last sight on this planet.
The Germans had set up machine guns. Everyone thought they were about to be mowed down within the next minute or two.
"There was eternity facing me, 90 seconds away," he said. "But nothing happened."
It's a moment that never left him. "I can still see absolutely every one of those men," he said. "I can still see those machine guns lined up."
Instead, Russel was sent to a POW camp, where the 150-pound man would be reduced to 120 pounds by Liberation Day.
Russel's presentation Sunday featured various documents that were projected onto a screen. He discussed them all, but had trouble warding off his emotions when he displayed a photo of two letters. The letters had been sent to him by his parents, and were returned, with notification that Russel was missing in action.
His parents were left to fear the worst for six months. Since he had just been assigned to the unit that was captured, Russel wasn't listed among the POWs. So, the Army classified him as missing during that time.
"My parents never knew what was going on," he said.
He eventually was taken to a permanent camp in Poland for ground-forces officers. That's where he and the others waited.
They passed time by chatting about their favorite topic. "Food, food, food," Russel said.
They were fed very little, if anything, on a typical day.
The Germans often kept Red Cross parcels for themselves, giving the prisoners a parcel to split among themselves.
The prisoners had even started digging a tunnel that was hidden under a pot-bellied stove in their quarters, Russel said.
They played a lot of baseball, but did so for reasons other than exercise. The prisoners would hide the dirt from the tunnel digs in their pants, and spread it out along the infield while playing.
They also had a radio that the Germans did not know about. In fact, they knew when the Russians were coming to Poland before their captors did.
But before the Russians arrived, the Germans moved the prisoners to another camp, marching them 65 miles over the course of eight days in the dead of winter.
Food also was scarce at this camp. "If we were extremely lucky, we got a big tub of water with the leg bone from a horse that had been bombed in it," he said. "There wouldn't be any meat left on it, just the bone."
Food became an obsession. One man wrote out a detailed three-year menu of breakfast, lunch and dinner that he planned to follow when he was freed. The prisoners even wrote a recipe book.
"When I got out of that camp, and got to an American camp, they gave us food, food food," he said.
They put on new uniforms, to replace their lice-ridden ones, and were able to return to the United States.
That's when Russel discovered his parents thought he had died.
"When I got home, my mail had stacked up," he said, showing the images of the returned mail that read "MIA" on the envelopes. "That's all my parents knew that whole time."
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